By: Iris P. Concepcion
There is a man whose harelip is not much evident when his head is looking down (but of course). This is truer when he is vicariously washing his clothes , down at the end of the kitchen as he fights with a radio.
I take a bath, lathering my laundry too as he does his harangue, swaying between a sweat and a howl with a laughter that is uniquely irksome. Sometimes, I join him in this mangling of lyrics, garbling my words with "travelling tradesmen" and he laughs his skull off. I never understood him in every possible way but I have always understood him. It is weird that way.
His kids are different though. All ridiculously goodlooking, one was diagnosed (the one who constantly appears here) with a funny clinical condition.. She thus, announced this as a matter-of-factly:
Me: You just got back from a hospital. What's your sickness?
Someone: None. She is just malnourished.
Everyone then provided this underfed beauty with milk. When she returned from her, I do not know, dietician, I suppose, she told me:
"I am no longer malnourished."
She often asks me what I am wearing (I call her Mom now; she calls me "anak"---we got rid of our "pare" spiel, it wore off its laughter component. Besides, it is already on t.v.--and we are originals).
Pointblank one time, she asked this writer if she is wearing Pampers.
I said: "Whaaaaaaaa?"
"Yung me-dyom, yung maliit."
She was referring to a sanitary napkin. She fears ghosts and anything stupidly frightening on screen. She regaled me a story about birds. She slept inside a moviehouse (but not that long because: "It is comfortable there. Ercon." She pronounces it that way. Ercon). She is a little dynamo hustler.
The youngest, that whoppack of a beauty who looks like Suri has undergone a huge transformation. She has gone bald. To make her hair more lush. She now looks like Jet Li. I call her a name that comes from a Disney animation. She snores just as cutely and goes little peewee sounds like "mommy" and this is incredibly guffaw-ish: bobo. Cut after her own mother. It is cute.
We all like putting petroleum jelly on any itch we see on our skin. It is our hobby.
They play with kids whom I have not gone tired of yapping with: fat kid (incredible cheeks: like two planets were gobbled and they landed on his face, one for Guinness), a curly one who eats his candy in two seconds and poohs it out. Another one has incredible hair: shiny as waxed floor.
And I often wonder why some people are so surly. These kids are real-time, work of art pieces of brats and they are funny as hell.You just need to fight and laugh with them.
I would like to quote Conrad de Quiros this time. About the reproductive health bill where the entity Celdran was zeroed in. We now see his famous prison bar picture but this is what this favorite columnist has to say about the ruckus:
"Celdran has shown that you can. He has shown that with much power comes much responsibility. Or at least he has shown that with much injury comes much insult (hihihihihihihihihi-myself). He has shown that if you are reckless, if you care little for the catastrophe you pose by your benightedness, indeed if you are venal, if you are carnal, if you are abusive, if you are oppressive, if you are so driven by lust to possess the body of Maria Clara or Inang Bayan, you can and will be called "Damaso!"